Category Archives: MA Fine Art

Finally updating with posts on each of my final pieces, have been busy the last few days.

This first one is Excess speed over the threshold, ink, acrylic paint, emulsion, text transfer on 250gsm Fabriano paper, 2.3m x 1.5m.

This artwork has been produced in response to my research into the 2005 Air France Airbus A340 crash in Toronto, Canada. The plane overran the runway and caught fire, all passengers and crew were successfully evacuated. The summary report can be found here on the Aviation Safety Network site. The full investigation report can be found here (pdf link).

The artwork also reflects my research into the spectacle, diasaters and the media. I aimed to portray the contrast between the ‘clean’ ‘safe’ spectacle talked about by Debord in Society of the Spectacle and the non- clean, actuality of the crash itself. This is why the image appears to be in two halves- the report text provides a context to the crash itself, the use of ink aims to reference the fire that spread after the crash. The text itself is not perfect (through use of transfer technique), it is hidden in some parts and highlighted in others in reference to the fragmentation (and also the pre-mediation) of information released to the public when man made disasters happen. The image fragmentation is also a reference to this but also reflects the physical state of the plane itself after the crash.

A couple of better images of the final works in place, these are all in the same studio/gallery space on opposite walls. The works have been titled and framed documents added to the side of the works.

The documents are a crash summary report facts and a passenger safety card of the plane operator and model. When these are shown in a gallery setting in october I am hoping to display them a little better and be able to add more ephemera relating to the plane itself.

Not shown (will add a photo later) is my accompanying work and research for this semesters work submitted for assessment. I will also make a further blog post on specific artists and how I have been inspired by their work.

These works are finally up and ready for assessment, I do still need to paint the surrounding wall white and clean it up a bit. This post is a quick overview, my next couple of posts will go into more detail of each artwork and will have better photographs.

The works in the first image are made in response to my research into the 1999 Britannia Airways B757 crash in Gerona, Spain (information here). I feel that these two are most successful out if the four images I have displayed for my assessment.

The works in the second image are made in response to the 2005 Air France A340 crash in Toronto, Canada (information here). After putting these two up on the wall and looking at them now I think that the images would work far batter on the wall if there were to be switched around- the nose of the plane on the right instead of the left, because of the configuration of the plane itself.

Both crashes involved the plane overrunning the runway at their destination airports. I chose to research two crashes that had similar circumstances for my final pieces to demonstrate different outcomes and media representation of similar situations.

This is another artwork that I had forgotten to write about on here. This is just a small piece where I was still experimenting with how to incorporate the report text, plane form and reference to the actual plane crash in one composition.

I like the aesthetic of this piece but I don’t think it is successful in communicating anything to the audience, a large part of this is also to do with its small scale.

This work focuses on the nose of the plane and combines the linework from a Boeing 757 CAD drawing and the livery of the Britannia’s 757. I like the ink method technique used in this work however I think the work would be better with text that could be read easily by the viewer.

Update of this artwork. It’s finally finished and I like how it has turned out but in the process of making it I have found ways to develop the next work that I make.

This is the largest work I have made so far this semester, it is (approx) 3.8 x 1.5 metres. This work is pretty much my testing out the scaling up of this crash image and text that I have done before. I feel that the text and the ink techniques fit this scale however after completing the work, the plane fuselage feel very small. It would have been a far more successful work if I had focused on a small fragmented section or minor detail in the crash debris.

I ripped the two ends of the paper and left the top and bottom cut cleanly. I decided to do this as I felt it worked on my last piece of work on the interior of the plane but here I wanted keep the balance of the clean edge and the broken plane so I ripped two sides and left the other two cut.

I also like the work on this scale and would like to do something similar to this again, however time restraints and cost of materials means that this is the only piece of this size I can complete this semester. By reducing the size a couple of meteres I can still make large work but I can make more of them and they will be far more manageable.

Another small experiment artwork I made a month ago that I forgot to show. This is me playing around with a full ink colour background and (small amounts of) image transfer plane details with ink and acrylic paint worked back into the paper.

I selected a small section of the aft wreckage and used it here as the main focus of the small piece. The lines aren’t perfect and neither is the detail but I like the use of fragmented outline. I have since moved on from this aesthetic in my work but it helped me test out how to choose the correct part of the plane debris for further artwork. I want to revisit this composition with a possible addition of text and less ink used in the background.